Use Secure Notes to lock down any information
Secure Notes in 1Password are a great place to put all your sensitive information that might not fit elsewhere—directions to a private party, a garage door password, sensitive photos, or even a good idea for a new story.
Now, if the information is related to one of 1Password’s other Vault items like a Login, Identity, or Wallet item, you can use the notes field in those items to add it. For example, you could add a tip to a website Login’s notes about how to get to the page you need, or add the name of your favorite teller to the notes of the Wallet item for your bank. But if the information is not related to any other Vault item, or you just need more room for your thoughts, hang on to those refrigerator sticky notes and try a 1Password Secure Note.
Secure Notes enable you to keep any information in a freeform text note while safely encrypting it along with the rest of your 1Password data. As of 1Password 3, you can also attach files up to 20 MB in size. To give you an idea of what that means: you could attach a whole bunch of typical documents like text, Word, and Excel files, or about 3-8 photos from your iPhone, to a Secure Note. Just like the website passwords and credit card numbers you can store in 1Password, you (or someone else!) cannot get to your Secure Notes or their attachments without entering your Master Password to unlock the 1Password app.
Here are the ways to add a new Secure Note to 1Password:
- Click the Secure Notes section in 1Password’s sidebar, then click the plus sign at the bottom of the window
- Choose File > New Item > New Secure Note from the menu bar at the top of your display
This will create a new Secure Note in the right side of 1Password’s window, and you can begin writing and attaching files. To save the Secure Note when you are finished, you can click the Edit button at the bottom of the note editing area, hit Command-E (the keyboard shortcut to toggle editing), or click another note or section of 1Password—your Secure Note will be saved automatically.
Before storing too much information in free-form Secure Notes, however, be sure to check out other 1Password item types and templates. For example, many things you might consider adding as a Secure Note may already have Wallet or Account item templates available for them.
Tips and Things To Know
- You can drag one or more .txt, .rtf, or .rtfd files into 1Password or its Dock icon to create a new Secure Note for each file
- 1Password can search inside the text of Secure Notes, which can be useful for Smart Search and Smart Folders
- You can attach files up to 20MB in size to Secure Notes (and every other 1Password Vault type). These files get copied into your 1Password data file, but they are not synchronized to 1Password for iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices.